GameGun makes Call of Duty more immersive

In an effort to improve his Call of Duty gaming experience, Reddit user [Harbingerx81] built a custom controller out of an Airsoft gun. Not only does this gun feature all the buttons and joysticks normally found on a stock xbox controller, it’s also loaded up with accelerometers and gyros so his on-screen character points his gun wherever [Harbingerx] points his gun.

From the imgur album, we can see that [Harbingerx] modded an Airsoft gun with a few buttons, d-pads, and switches optimized for Call of Duty. What really gets us is the clever use of accelerometers and a gun-mounted HDMI display (with a wireless HDMI adapter) to provide a home-made virtual reality setup for one of the most popular games.

Building this controller/display wasn’t cheap – it cost [Harbingerx] upwards of $600. A good price, we’re thinking, since the Oculus Rift will be north of $300 along with the added cost of a gun-shaped xbox controller.

Nice job on this one. I like that its wireless. I built something similar a while ago but was too cheap to get a wireless HDMI setup. Also I was some conflicting comments regarding the latency with the wireless HDMI are I wanted to avoid that.

I found that the pistol grip I got for my Wiimotes was quite a nice change when I was playing through Conduit, but they really should have included a way to pass button presses into the controller, so you didn’t have awkward motions for reload, grenade, etc.

Agreed though, a wiimote style aiming setup would be more effective than just using the mouse to target, I’d say.

Yeah, use an accelerometer harvested from a Wiimote, old phone, etc.
I got a nice 3 axis one from a broken Macbook donated by I-Q and it has analogue output going to the PIC 16F818 right next door.

Not like those nasty i2c ones which require a PhD in computer science to turn on.

Another neat trick is to harvest three security strip sensors, wind wire round and use magnets to make an authentic “wobbly” tilt sensor to add realism.
Adding a pair of small fans to provide windage would also be pretty interesting.

This is a very poor design when you think about it. It’s in no way ambidextrous. Some minor modifications will fix it right up and get people gaming along. I hope this guy looks to make a business with this. With some refinements, he could make a killing, pun intended.